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Humiecki & Graef Skarb EDT Perfume Review

My perfume loves range from the tried and trued classics from heritage brands like Guerlain and Caron to ultra-modern-synth-robot stuff from brands like CdG and CB I Hate Perfume. One of my favorite houses in the “ultra-mod” genre is Humieck & Graef because they go there. I’ve always thought if I were to start a brand it would be ridiculous. I’d be like: this is inspired by “puberty” and this one is inspired “existentialist angst and Jell-O molds. Come over here and smell my perfume inspired by I Want Those Buns!/Buns of Steel VCR tapes”. Humiecki and Graef does that. Well, with less camp than I would, but they “go there” in their own way.

Skarb is a perfume inspired by melancholy. Yes, melancholy. Malaise! It’s like I’ve made the brief for this. And then it goes on to say it’s inspired by Slavic man tears. I’ve made a few Slavic men cry in my day and it wasn’t a beautiful thing like Skarb. It was just awkward.

Skarb opens with fresh apple-like chamomile flowers with uncooked barley. Fennel and fresh wormwood. Skarb is an odd one, in a good way. There’s an aquatic muskmelon over crushed greens and cozy woods. The rest is rather mellow but not melancholy, maybe consolatory but not melancholy. For most of the wear, it wears as a fresh, acrid incense over ambery woods. There’s brightness and darkness within Skarb.

Give Skarb a try if you like “fresh incense” perfumes. Or fragrances like aroma M Geisha Green, Ormonde Jayne Woman, By Kilian A Taste of Heaven, Nasomatto Absinth, Olivier Durbano Black Tourmaline and/or CdG Incense Series Avignon. Skarb is unisex but it does lean more masculine.

Skarb has above average projection and longevity…for an EDP and it’s labeled EDT Concentree (whatever that means). I get 12+ hours of wear. It’s something that I want to wear on a sunny autumn day.

Victoria’s FInal EauPINION – Chamomile tea, barley and spices over ambery woods and acrid incense. Brightness with darkness that is more consolatory than melancholy. I really like it and I’m enjoying exploring this house.

Dear Victoria
Oh please… do start a perfume line, or at least art direct one, I love the sound of your briefs!!
As to the matter in hand, it sounds rather intriguing, though not perhaps up to the for once fine hyperbole of the PR fluff.
I’m off to smell some uncooked barley now, for the sake of reference.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy

Slavic man tears! Just when I thought I’d seen everything in perfume descriptions. That does intrigue me, although chamomile usually carries associations of sick days for me (herbal tea and all). But I do love the ideas of your inspirations. I greatly hope you make those someday, or at least that someone makes them for you.